Editor’s Note: NGI’s Mexico Gas Price Index, a leader tracking Mexico natural gas market reform, is offering the following column by Eduardo Prud’homme as part of a regular series on understanding this process.
At the end of August, Cenagas will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Its creation was based around it becoming the central player in the Mexican natural gas market. It would be a firm-based capacity manager for the strategic pipeline network, the Sistrangas, an economic agent capable of financing the expansion and reinforcement of Mexico's energy infrastructure. With dual functions as technical manager and transporter, Cenagas still has legal authority to take charge of the coordination and development of cross-border pipelines, that is, to optimize the entry of U.S. natural gas into the country through open access connectivity.
The Reynosa bypass pipeline project is an important technical initiative to improve redundancy in natural gas imports, since the aggregate capacity of the cross-border pipelines in the area is underutilized. Maximum daily quantities cannot be increased, and it is only possible to see injection peaks into the system with interruptible contracts. This inefficiency is in turn transferred to the 48-inch diameter trunk line that continues along the Gulf Coast, where the Soto la Marina and Altamira compression stations are only occasionally utilized. This is because of Reynosa’s irregular urban development, which has impacted the layout of the Sistrangas line in the area. This prevents the older pipeline from operating in higher pressure ranges needed according to Cenagas rules.
